Travel and Tourism as Metaphor in Enid Shomer’s Tourist Season

The Thematic Claim: Life as a Tourist Experience

Enid Shomer's collection Tourist Season uses the literal act of travel to explore a deeper metaphor: every character is a tourist in her own life. The title itself suggests a period of temporary passage—a season when people visit, observe, and depart without ever truly belonging. Whether crossing continents or navigating retirement, these women are never permanent residents of their own circumstances. They move through roles, relationships, and identities as transiently as a traveler passes through a foreign city. The physical journey to a new place becomes the vehicle for an inner voyage of self-discovery, loss, or reinvention.

Three Journeys That Embody the Metaphor

Iris Hornstein: The Spiritual Tourist in Tibet

In “Chosen”, Iris Hornstein, a Miami speech therapist, is visited by two Tibetan monks who declare her the reincarnation of a Buddhist saint. Skeptical but curious, she travels to Tibet with her husband Aaron. Her training on a treadmill with books and sounds feels like a packaged itinerary—intellectually stimulating but disconnected from direct experience. When she finally meets the Dalai Lama and agrees to serve as a “bridge between cultures,” she is still an outsider, a tourist in a faith she has not fully adopted. Back in Florida, the monks become her assistants and translators, further highlighting her position as a visitor in both worlds. Iris never stops being an observer; her spiritual journey remains incomplete, a sightseeing trip through sanctity.

Frieda: The Retiree on a Package Tour

In the story “Tourist Season” (chapter 4), Frieda and her husband Milt take a bus trip to St. Augustine, a restored historical town. Frieda, a former Women’s Airforce Service Pilot, once flew at twenty thousand feet; now she is grounded in a Florida condo, surrounded by elderly neighbors. The bus is a literal tourist vehicle, but the journey is also a metaphor for her marriage. She and Milt have become tourists to each other—Milt complains about the “gold-plated years,” while Frieda feels twenty inside but is trapped in an aging body. Irv Snyder uses his Polaroid to capture beach girls, saying “I’m a tourist,” demonstrating how tourism can become a way to distance oneself from real engagement. Frieda’s inner journey is toward accepting her own mortality and the limits of her partnership.

Garland McKenney: The Emotional Tourist

Garland McKenney appears in “Fill In the Blank” (chapter 3) and later in “Sweethearts.” In the first story, she takes a personality test that reveals her hunger for risk and her inability to feel remorse. She robs a physical-therapy office with her roommate Linda, but when Linda confesses and urges Garland to do the same, Garland cannot genuinely process guilt. She goes through the motions of counseling and probation like a tourist following a guidebook—never internalizing the experience. She remains an observer of her own life, detached from the moral consequences of her actions. The test’s final question, “What makes a good life?” is one she cannot answer because she has never truly inhabited any life. She is a tourist in ethics, sampling transgression without commitment.

Symbolic Connections

The Polaroid photographs that Irv Snyder takes in the “Tourist Season” story epitomize the tourist’s impulse to capture and possess a moment without understanding it. The images “bloom on the glossy paper” but fail to connect him to the people he photographs. Similarly, Frieda’s memory of flying—her own fire and passion—is a snapshot from the past that no longer aligns with her present. The pager number 666, mentioned in another story, hints at the dark undercurrent of tourism: the sense of being cursed or marked as an outsider. The wolf tail (from “Laws of Nature”) symbolizes a similar wildness that characters like Helen cannot keep; they are visitors to their own primal selves.

Complexity and Contradiction

Not all journeys are chosen. Sheila in “The Other Mother” is on the run after a kidnapping; her travel is involuntary, a flight from truth rather than a quest. This complicates the metaphor: tourism implies agency, but Shomer shows that even forced movement transforms the traveler. Likewise, Janet in “Rapture” is an artist who “hardly ever referred to herself as an artist”—she is a tourist in her own talent. The metaphor also reveals the commodification of experience. Frieda’s brochure for St. Augustine promises a “restored” past, just as the retirement community packages leisure into scheduled activities. These characters are not just tourists in their lives; they are being tour-guide by social expectations. The reading group questions in the book’s end matter ask directly: “In what ways are the characters in these stories all tourists in their own lives?” This metacommentary confirms that the author intended the theme to be explicit and layered.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does Iris’s journey to Tibet both fulfill and fail the promise of a traditional spiritual quest?

Iris physically travels to a holy site and receives instruction from monks, fulfilling the external form of a pilgrimage. Yet she never fully embraces the faith; she remains a skeptic, a tourist observing Buddhism rather than converting. Her frustration with indirect training mirrors the way tourists often fail to penetrate the culture they visit. The “bridge” role she accepts keeps her in a liminal space, neither fully committed nor detached.

2. In what way is Irv Snyder’s Polaroid photography a metaphor for the tourist’s relationship with experience?

Irv uses the camera to collect images of strangers, especially young women, without forming any relationship. The act of taking a picture allows him to claim a moment of contact while avoiding genuine interaction. His repeated phrase “I’m a tourist” excuses his objectifying gaze. The photographs become souvenirs that cannot capture the interior lives of his subjects, mirroring how the characters in the book fail to hold onto the essence of their own lives.

3. How does Frieda’s past as a WASP pilot contrast with her present as a retiree on a bus tour?

As a pilot, Frieda was in control, soaring above the earth. She felt bloodlust and heroism. Now she is a passenger on a charter bus, following a brochure’s schedule. The contrast highlights how aging transforms her from an active agent into a passive tourist in her own life. Yet her inner sense of being twenty suggests that the tourist identity is imposed from outside; she still feels the desire to pilot her own course, even if circumstances now confine her.

4. Why does Garland fail to answer the personality test’s final question about what makes a good life?

Garland experiences emotions but cannot integrate them into a coherent identity. She robs without remorse, seeks risk without purpose, and attends counseling without change. The test’s question assumes a self-aware subject, but Garland is merely passing through her own existence. She has no stable values or commitments, so the question is unanswerable. She remains a tourist in the landscape of ethics.

5. What does the reading group question “In what ways are the characters in these stories all tourists in their own lives?” imply about the book’s structure?

The question, posed in the final chapter, invites readers to apply the metaphor across every story. It implies that the collection is not just a set of unrelated tales but a unified exploration of transience. Each character—a speech therapist, a retiree, a thief, a mother on the run—is separated from her authentic self by circumstance or choice. The tourist metaphor becomes the connective tissue, suggesting that identity itself is a temporary destination.